July 12, 2013

Storytelling (2002) [Unrated and R-rated Versions] - DVD

by Walter
Chaw The line between love and misanthropy is thin and Todd Solondz is
a cunning cartographer of that precarious divide. He sees political
correctness as an insidious product of the kind of paternalistic racism
that discards truth in favour of generally held truisms, a crutch for
well-meaning racists who lack the wit to grasp that the basic
misunderstanding of difference driving a desire to discriminate against
minorities is identical to that which drives a desire to protect
minorities. Solondz's films are confrontational in the extreme, full
frontal assaults on the hypocrisy that fuels most relationships and
stark dissections of the politics of cruelty.

Unfortunately,
in his third film, Storytelling, Solondz dilutes
the focus of his ire with a few broadsides at Sam Mendes and his American
Beauty (Mendes apparently derided Solondz's Happiness
for talking down to its characters), and a somewhat unfocused slam or
homage to a similar alleged condescension in Chris Smith's documentary American
Movie. (Solondz goes so far as to enlist that film's Mike
Schank as a documentary filmmaker's cameraman; the doc in question is
called "American Scooby.")

Essentially
what Solondz attempts with Storytelling is an
attack on critics of his aggressively confrontational approach to
fiction while simultaneously trying to anticipate and deflate future
criticism of the same. And though Solondz's counter-attack/apologia is
trenchantly written and laudably thought-provoking, his rages are by
now familiar (and better served by the scope and savagery of Happiness),
and his defensiveness is ironically the most unbecoming element of a
film that counts among its targets racism, disability, classism,
homosexuality, and higher education.

Storytelling is split
into two parts, each introduced with a title card. The first is dubbed "Fiction" and runs about
twenty-five minutes, the second is naturally "Non-fiction" and is just
over an hour long. Despite its brevity or because of it, "Fiction" is
the stronger of the two pieces; Solondz crams issues of misogyny, race,
and Ivory Tower pretension into its tight arc and transfers the
embedded hypocrisies of both onto the process of literary criticism as
it manifests itself in college writing courses. An easy target to be
sure, the all-white, nearly all-Caucasian woman writer's seminar in Storytelling
is presided over by an African-American Pulitzer Prize-winning author
(Mr. Scott, played by Robert Wisdom) who isn't quite as mean as Harlan
Ellison, though he tries.

"Non-fiction"
returns to more familiar Todd Solondz territory with a middle-class
Jersey Jewish family ruled by John Goodman's suburban menace and Julie
Hagerty's cult of Spielbergian victimhood. In a brilliant moment, their
eldest son, wastoid Scooby (Mark Webber), offers: "So, what you're
saying is that if it wasn't for Hitler, I wouldn't have been born."
Solondz is on firm ground with statements like these, erupting as they
do in the midst of familiar familial settings. Less compelling is a
secondary plot involving a dorky documentary filmmaker (Paul Giamatti)
intent on crafting a deconstructivist piece on the disintegration of
the traditional middle-class.

Making Scooby
a star in the same way Mark Borchardt gained a measure of dubious
celebrity through American Movie, "Non-fiction"
deflates its potential for classist vitriol with Solondz's fourth-wall
breaking introduction of a film editor (Franka Potente). It's a device
that successfully comments on the criticisms of Solondz's work
(particularly the "condescending to your characters" dig) but offers
little in the way of real insight into why Solondz feels the need to
say he's sorry in the first place.

Still, the
instinct to apologize for what shames us is perhaps the most damaging
of our personal demons. Solondz is the bamboo splinter beneath the
fingernail of that shame--his manifesto lies in the decision to
confront the ultimate causes behind our embarrassment with fetishism,
our horror at the recognition of racial difference (suggested by George
Bush Sr.'s boldly insane, "I don't see colour"), and our inability to
treat people with physical disabilities as anything other than children
or objects of pity. More complicated, Solondz suggests that the one
element that unifies all of humanity across biology and sociology is
not a bleeding hearted "love," but rather the almost limitless capacity
for cruelty. Through a brilliantly acerbic series of events, the
loathsome child Mikey (Jonathan Osser) hijacks control of his parentage
and the fate of embattled housekeeper Consuelo (Lupe Ontiveros),
ultimately facilitating his own demise at the hand of the
servant-class's raging ire. It's the O.J. trial in a nutshell, from
gentrified equivocation to a grassroots eruption burning down its own
house.

Alas, too
much of Storytelling moves away from Solondz's
social critique, casting its audience as that of intellectual lector in
contemplation of the auteur's professional injuries. Although Solondz
garners a fair measure of respect for his ardour for exposing the
sanctimony of our daily interactions, Storytelling's
very existence exposes a fundamental degree of hypocrisy. A film
designed to be the fiery response to critics of his combative style is
his most pandering (in the first section Solondz uses a red
square to obscure a violent (but consensual) sex act, a flaccid
pre-emptive strike against the MPAA) and, in the end, his most fearful
and apologetic.

Though I
believe the critic's role to be a vital one in the fostering and
appreciation of art, it ought to remain separate from the creative
process. Solondz's mistake is not taking his critics to heart, but
fashioning a film that responds directly to his negative criticism. The
last irony of Storytelling is that its desperation
to justify itself proves Solondz's critics right: beneath that
carefully fostered, no-bullshit dogma beats the heart of an artist
uncertain enough about his role as chronicler and artist, and faithless
enough in the truth of his own vision, that he needs to devote two
short films to his defense. Until now, the literate fury of Solondz's
films spoke for itself.

THE DVDby Bill ChambersStorytelling. Available on
DVD from New Line, the film should
pick up some cult momentum on home video, especially now that you can
view it as originally intended; unfortunately, the Storytelling
disc is another Todd Solondz special, meaning no extras save for a
trailer. Four versions of the film cohabit a dual-layer platter: 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen editions of the unrated and R-rated Storytelling,
plus two full-frame (unmatted) editions of the same. (This was
accomplished through seamless branching technology--there aren't
actually four separate 87-minute movies compressed onto a single platter.)
The image is up to New Line's usual high standards, with only some
light artifacting around the letters of the opening credits; there's a
long close-up of John Goodman late in the picture that's so detailed
you can count his pores. Darker scenes--particularly in the first
segment ("Fiction")--are lacking in crispness, however. There is little
to distinguish the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix from the Dolby Surround track,
except that music sounds a tad fuller in the former; be sure to turn on
the captions for Belle & Sebastian's
closing credits track, whose facile lyrics serve as Cliff's Notes for Storytelling.
I also recommend watching the unrated cut, because without the red box
the sex scene makes a stronger political statement than one against the
MPAA. Originally published: July 13,
2002.